So, I’ve made a few things in my time here at school, and all have them have ranged from being decent to excellent, except this one recipe. Taken from userealbutter, the recipe is not one for an amateur cook/baker. Little did Melanie and I know….

The process is pretty simple, which is why we didn’t realize how finicky it could be. Making lemon curd involves just using lemon juice, lemon zest, egg yolk, sugar, and a saucepan. That part wasn’t bad. I made the lemon curd ahead of time (quite amazing, if I do say so myself… so full of flavor). The part that got us was the macarons.

Starting with a not so excellent food processor, we managed to process the almonds into relatively small bits (not fine enough, as we later found out, but they were decently small). We then zested another lemon to add to the confection, preparing for mixing.

lemon zest!

Well, that went over fine. Then there was the egg white mixing with sugar… typical of a meringue type thing.

look at the whipping go!

It’s this point where we think we may have whipped it too much. But it was hard to tell because of the granulated almonds. Their consistency made us think that we needed to mix it more, which probably wasn’t the case (or so we think, but as I said, we’re amateurs at least with macarons…)

Anyway, after that, we had our circles of mixture. There was SO MUCH SUGAR in that mixture. I mean… four cups of sugar is a LOT of sugar.

as close to circular as we could get...

And of course, given that dorm ovens are obviously not the perfect place to be making a baked good, we had some issues with the consistency. About a third of them burned on the outside, while the inside was still gooey. They didn’t rise nearly as much as they should have, although the fact that they did was impressive enough for us. There was one sort of close to okay one, but that was about it…

mel with the one almost perfect macaron!

We tried to hide them from everyone, so we began eating them… and let me tell you, two cups of sugar each is NOT the way to go at midnight. I was up for ages! Anyway… one of our failed experiments, but we’re on the road to getting better all the time!

This marks the beginning of a journey into the creative aspects of the world… from the point of view of an engineer. I’ve dabbled in the basic arts, but this marks the beginning of an epic quest to delve deep into those arts and unlock design ideas that would not be possible otherwise. Enjoy the ride!